Despite appearances, women don’t rule in Germany

"Scratch beneath the surface and it's clear that, despite appearances, the empowerment of women has still not filtered down to second-level leadership in German politics, let alone the private sector." | Ronald Wittek/EPA

"Scratch beneath the surface and it's clear that, despite appearances, the empowerment of women has still not filtered down to second-level leadership in German politics, let alone the private sector." | Ronald Wittek/EPA

BERLIN — With Germany’s two biggest parties led by women for the first time in each case — the Christian Democrats (CDU) by Angela Merkel since 2000 and the Social Democrats (SPD) by Andrea Nahles since Sunday — you might think German women are finally on an equal footing with men.

Look across Merkel’s Cabinet and that impression is reinforced: The chancellor upheld her commitment to gender parity, appointing three female and three male ministers from the CDU, as well as a woman, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, as general secretary of the Cabinet (and heir apparent to Merkel). The SPD, as partners in the ruling “grand coalition,” say they are just as committed to equality in Cabinet posts.

But scratch beneath the surface and it’s clear that despite appearances, the empowerment of women has still not filtered down to second-level leadership in German politics, let alone the private sector.

A photo of Interior Minister Horst Seehofer and his eight-strong leadership team published on the official ministerial website had a glaring omission: It included no women, prompting jokes and criticism on social media that it was indeed a #FührungsMANNschaft (“leadership team” in German).

“It was only seen as a problem once there was a public outcry,” said Katja Dörner, who has been a member of the Bundestag since 2009 and deputy chair of the Green party parliamentary group since 2013. In the country at large, said Dörner, women are far from achieving equal treatment in the workplace.

“Male-dominated structures and networks continue to prevail,” she said. “Concrete measures are needed in order to support women and to search them out at a grassroots level.”

Seehofer’s interior ministry is no exception. The economics, transport and agricultural ministries also have no women in their leadership teams — despite a female minister, Julia Klöckner, leading the latter.

And the situation is not improving. The percentage of women in the German parliament is the lowest it has been in the past 20 years, at 30.9 percent. Germany trails behind both Spain (40 percent) and France (39 percent). In part, this is due to the arrival in the Bundestag of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the return of the liberal Free Democrats (FDP); women account for just 10.9 percent of AfD seats and 23.8 percent of FDP seats.

The FDP’s second-in-command Nicola Beer tweeted her congratulations to Nahles for winning the vote, using the new SPD leader’s media nickname #Trümmerfrau, a term describing the women who helped clear the rubble from Germany’s bombed-out cities in the aftermath of World War II. The tweet made it clear Nahles shouldn’t expect softer treatment from fellow women politicians like Beer, who pointed out that only 66 percent of SPD delegates voted her into the job.

Merkel’s own CDU/CSU bloc, despite a higher concentration of women in senior positions, managed to put women in only a fifth of its seats in the lower house.

Two parties in the house — the Greens and the far-left Die Linke — managed to send more women to the Bundestag than men through the introduction of quotas.

Last week, the FDP, which has long considered quotas anathema to its liberal philosophy, said it was now considering such a measure. The reason: Female participation the party, as measured by membership, has hit a 30-year low.

“There’s no denying that the situation is unsatisfactory and we’ve been thinking about it for a long time,” Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, one of only three women in the FDP’s senior ranks, said this month.

“It is still difficult for women to find a way to reconcile having a family and a career” — Katja Dörner, Green party

Even so, Strack-Zimmermann said she’s still not convinced a quota is the answer, saying she remains torn. “My internal compass says ‘No’ to a quota,” she said.

As for the SPD, “a woman party chief alone doesn’t mean equality,” wrote the Süddeutsche Zeitung ahead of Nahles’ leadership contest against another female contender, Flensburg Mayor Simone Lange. The paper welcomed an end to what it called “155 years of patriarchy” in the SPD, but complained that it “still mainly entrusts women with issues like children, litigation and hamsters” — an apparent reference to women leading the family, justice and environment ministries rather than heavyweight portfolios like finance and foreign affairs.

Seek them out

“Quotas shouldn’t be necessary,” said Dörner, who first entered local politics in Bonn in the 1990s as the product of a quota. “But they are effective … At the beginning of my political career, I never would have applied if I hadn’t been approached. You have to seek out qualified women and support them.”

German politics is hardly unique in the under-representation of women: The U.K. similarly has a high concentration of women in the very top jobs — including Prime Minister Theresa May, Home Secretary Amber Rudd and Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon — but a much more diluted female line-up lower down the ranks. In the House of Commons, only 32 percent of the sitting MPs are women.

Beyond the political sphere, Germany faces a wider problem with women in the workplace.

In the country at large, women are not represented in leadership positions and when they are, they often do not receive equal pay for their work: 93.5 percent of executive board members in Germany’s 160 publicly traded companies are male, according to the AllBright Foundation. Eurostat puts Germany’s gender pay gap at 21.5 percent, significantly higher than the European Union average of 16.2 percent.

According to Eurostat, the Czech Republic and Estonia are the only two EU countries with larger gender pay gaps than Germany. Both these countries have far lower GDPs than Germany, but in terms of the gender pay gap, they face similar hurdles: too few women in leadership positions, an imbalance of childcare responsibility and persisting stereotypes about gender roles.

“It is still difficult for women to find a way to reconcile having a family and a career,” said Dörner, regarding the situation in Germany.

Legislation to combat Germany’s gender problem has so far been largely ineffectual. Companies were encouraged during the last government to set targets for the number of women on executive boards, but faced no consequences when the target they set was “zero.” As of January this year, there is new legislation to allow women to find out what their colleagues are earning. But the small print of the legislation means the conditions required will rarely apply.

The government routinely announces new measures to combat gender inequality in the workplace, but nothing seems to hit the mark. For example, Germany has generous allowances for Elternzeit (parental leave) yet only 35 percent of fathers take advantage of it and of those who do, most only take the minimum two months.

“The new coalition agreement mentioned the issues women face in the workplace, but failed to make any concrete suggestions,” said Dörner. “Of course that’s not enough.”

A new report by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) suggests that in Germany, a woman’s chance of receiving equal treatment in the workplace depends largely on where she lives. In the West, men earn significantly more than women. By contrast, women in former communist East Germany tend to earn more than their male counterparts.

The most interesting thing about this study is that it shows a huge divergence between the average pay in different German regions — and yet women, in the east as in the west, are earning on average the same amount as each other.

“You can’t change the regional makeup of the German economy … The thing you can change is women’s attitudes to work” — Michaela Fuchs, Institute for Employment Research

“The career options for women are limited to a few professions,” said Michaela Fuchs, the author of the IAB study. “Most women go into jobs in the service sector and social care where you don’t earn a lot of money and there aren’t many opportunities to advance.

“Men, on the other hand, go into lots of different professions and are able to progress in their careers in ways that women don’t,” said Fuchs.

East-west divide

The pay gap is especially acute in the west because it is home to industrial towns where the economy is based largely on the car industry that employs a lot of men and pays them highly.

“You can’t change the regional makeup of the German economy,” Fuchs said of the regional differences in pay. “The thing you can change is women’s attitudes to work.”

Across Germany, working women are highly likely to work part-time (47 percent) while only a fraction of men do the same (11 percent). This limits women’s earning potential and their chances of progressing into positions of leadership.

There are also financial disincentives for women to work. In Germany, married couples receive tax breaks: Their joint income is divided by two and they both pay tax according to the bracket that sum falls into. It is a system that benefits a couple most when there is a large discrepancy between their two incomes, creating a perverse incentive for one spouse to minimize their earnings.

If a woman has recently become a mother and is considering returning to work, she is faced with the reality that she may actually lose money by doing so. It’s no wonder so many decide to stay home.

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Capt Europe

Even if there were no men left on the planet, the fascist feminists would still be complaining about the patriarchy and how women are discriminated against

Women are never happy. They constantly moan, complain, cause arguments and nag nag nag all the effing time and this article is a good example of a woman moaning about nothing

Posted on 4/24/18 | 8:01 AM CEST

Arnold Nussbaum

And here I was – misogynistic male chauvinist – thinking that raising upstanding, intelligent and socially mature children was a worthwhile profession.

Posted on 4/24/18 | 8:22 AM CEST

Bob Rob

It’s the current year have we still not accepted that men are not women and that mother nature geared them to be good at different tasks ? Women are good at things like schooling, nursing men are good at things like engineering and construction work. This is not some evil plot by some conspiracy keeping a lady down. It’s like how women love to be housewife’s they get pleasure from nurturing you. To see you be pleased and happy you got a meal in your tummy. This is basic biology don’t try and fight biology.

Posted on 4/24/18 | 3:55 PM CEST

Irene Duym

About time men start to dig into (and pretend to enjoy) cooking, washing, ironing, cleaning, knitting, dusting etc etc so that women can live a life they enjoy.

Posted on 4/24/18 | 6:36 PM CEST

Arnold Nussbaum

@Irene Duym
I see that you do not mention raising children; all the other things are better done by machine – designed by men 😉

Posted on 4/25/18 | 6:36 AM CEST

Johann M. Wolff

I am pretty much against quotas just as my mother is.
My mother retired 2 years ago, was an engineer who climbed the ladder till the top in her organization, without any quotas. Of course, this meant that she went back to work 2 months after giving birth and until retirement she worked between 12-18 hours/ day.

Listening to politicians talking, especially from the Greens and SPD, who never worked in the private sector, makes me to wonder what went wrong with our society that we keep electing and paying these ppl.

Basically companies are not misogynists but they are anti-baby. If a person gets into a mid-management position and afterwards leaves for 2-3 years, maybe multiple time, that’s a big hurdle for the company (which is not a charitable organization).

My better half is a teacher, therefore with fix schedule. Fits her well. I wouldn’t want her to do what I’m doing, being in the office for 12-18 hours a day, being at airports in the middle of the night, being stuck in Osaka, etc. And not becasue I am misogynist, but becasue I love her.
Of course, each has the free choice to follow the desired career path, and has to support the consequences of their choice.

Posted on 4/26/18 | 9:07 AM CEST

Trisul Kiboko

“A photo of Interior Minister Horst Seehofer and his eight-strong leadership team published on the official ministerial website had a glaring omission: It included no women”

Surely, we all understand that Seehofer, CSU and Bavaria are not typical for Germany as a whole. Indeed, if anything, most of Germany despises them.

Participation of women in politics is fairly easy to fix, but the men do not want to see it done. Wherever there is a parliament or an assembly, we should elect two representatives, a man and a woman … problem solved. This only works for parliaments, but it is a good place to start.